i realize i have not posted here much, so here's one to try and compensate for that! these characters are all from ANOMIE, a personal project of mine i've been working on for the past half year or so.
third image is heavily based off a photograph by gie knaeps (for getty images) of brian molko
image description(s) under cut
image 1: digital illustration of a group photo of anomie, a fictional band, consiting of marco, rice, eulalie, and Q. they are all wearing colors of their respective pride flags. marco, a half human half frog man, has eyeshadow in the colors of the aromantic and bi flag, with a boa with the colors of the trans flag. he wears interlocked male symbol necklace and double crescent earring. rice, a werewolf, has streaks of trans flag colors in hir hair and a non-binary bracelet, with generally subtle allusions to their identity. eulalie, a mantis, is in full rivethead fashion, with an aegosexual flag stiched into her top, parts of her beanie, and a lesbian flag coat tied around her waist. she also has an asexual symbol on a choker and a belt with interlocked female symbols. Q is a rusted one eyed robot with a curled antennae on their head with a light bulb at the end, like that of a female angler fish. it wears a shirt with the aroace flag colors on one side, ties around the cords on their arm in the colors of the gay flag, and a skirt with colors of the non-binary flag. they all strike poses and smile. [end id]
image 2: digital illustration of Q from anomie. they stand on a pier at the beach, wearing a sun hat with flowers, a bathing suit with a pattern of lemons, and a multicolored shoulder bag. on one hand, they wear a falcon glove, with a barn owl perched upon their gloved hand. [end id]
image 3: digital illustration of marco from anomie. he is younger than he appears in the first image, with a differently shaved beard and hair partially dyed blue and in braids that gradiate to red. a microphone obscures a small part of his face as he smiles, looking out at presumably a crowd. he hugs his guitar, a fender player stratocaster. [end id]
image 4: digital illustration of marco and rice from anomie. they both look significantly younger than the first image: marco has long, teal hair that fades downwards into red, and no beard or tail. rice has shorter , silver ombre hair, and fur around their muzzle that looks like a beard. their backs are turned to the viewer, faces visible as they face eachother, standing in front of a huge, theatrical curtain. marco looks at rice with a surprised and curious expression, raising his eyebrows far above his glasses. rice glares angrily at him, putting their ears back and frowning. marco grips his pants with his frog hands, seemingly about to take them off, with his boxers low enough to see his lower back. a slightly smeared lipstick kiss is partially visible above his boxers. [end id]
image 5: digital illustration of marco and eulalie from ANOMIE. marco is talking, raising a frog hand and tilting his head to look at eulalie. he wears a jacket and pink t-shirt, and eulalie wears a black bandana and her usual rivethead fashion. behind them is a very blurry city. [end id]
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Durkheim´s Influence on The Ink Black Heart (Part 2)
In Part 1, I brought up that Émile Durkheim was the author of the quotation about anomie Robin stumbles upon at North Grove, and summarised his ideas on the topic.
In the second part of this post, I would like to analyse how Rowling explores the concept of anomie in The Ink Black Heart. *Spoilers ahead*
Rowling´s Understanding of Anomie
Though they're not part of the book per se, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss Rowling´s statements about the themes of The Ink Black Heart first:
[The Ink Black Heart] is a novel about disconnection. And people feeling disconnected in real life. And exploring what they find online as a way of connecting. (...) [The] central theme of the book is anomie, which is a state of lacking normal social or moral norms. (...) It is a very sort of modern malaise. (...) People losing meaning in their daily lives and – and feeling that they themselves were not really part of society. Not really part of a whole.
- The Ink Black Heart Q&A, 22th September 2022
The central theme of The Ink Black Heart is sickness. At the (dark) heart is anomie, a sickness of disconnection, the kind of amoral nihilism you find in people who find no place for themselves in any of the sustaining things that keep human beings grounded – real life friends, family, sense of purpose, meaningful work and so on. Then you’ve got obsession, which when extreme can become mental illness. In the mods of the game, we have a group of individuals who’ve latched on to TIBH and whose obsession becomes central to their lives. Most were looking for those things that keep anomie at bay – community, friendship, a hobby – and there’s nothing ignoble about wanting those things, we all need them. Yet things have become toxic inside the game: they thought they’d found an escape from the real world but there was a sickness in the online refuge they found, too.
- Twitter, 15th October 2022
Loss of meaning, uncontrolled emotions, social groups keeping humans grounded... All of these were discussed by Durkheim in Suicide.
Of course, there are some differences between Durkheim´s description of anomie and Rowling´s: for one, Rowling doesn't seem to draw a line between insufficient social interaction (egoism) and insufficient social regulation (anomie).
Then again, as pointed out by Durkheim, these concepts are intertwined: if you're isolated from society (egoism), it can't have that much of an influence over you, and if you rebel against social norms (anomie), you probably don't have much of a social life.
Using “egoism” without defining it properly first would be confusing to a modern audience as well, since we have a very different understanding of the term than Durkheim´s.
Now that we have seen how Rowling defines anomie, let's take a closer look to how it's used in The Ink Black Heart, beginning with the eponym character.
Anomie: A Revealing Pseudonym
‘In the first episode of the cartoon, Harty introduces himself as evil, quite cheerfully. Could someone who feels they don’t fit in with society see something of themselves in Harty? Is that why they’ve got so obsessive about the cartoon?’
‘You think we should add “evil and knows it” to the profile?’
‘You’re joking,’ said Robin, ‘but maybe we should… You know, I keep wondering why they called themselves “Anomie”. Wouldn’t you expect a superfan to choose the name of one of the characters? Calling themselves Anomie’s almost… almost declaring upfront what they are, isn’t it? “A lack of moral or societal values.” They’re being weirdly open about it… unless they’re just some disaffected teenager,’ she added, second-guessing herself. ‘It’s the kind of name a teenager might pick, I suppose. Somebody who’s feeling angry at the world.’
- The Ink Black Heart, 19
Shortly before Anomie is introduced as a character, we're told what Drek´s Game is really about:
Edie: (...) Drek’s game – the one in the cartoon—
Josh: —yeah—
Edie: —isn’t really a game. Or, I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be, was it?
Josh: Drek’s game is – you know [in Drek’s voice] ‘play the game, bwah!’… abide by rules. Do the expected thing.
TB: So it’s a metaphor?
Edie: Yeah, but it’s paradoxical, because Drek himself never plays by the rules. He just likes watching everyone else try and follow them.
- The Ink Black Heart, 5
“Never plays by the rules”, “likes watching everyone else try and follow them”... Over the course of book, we see Anomie, the “gamemaster”, doing exactly that. Rule 14, anybody?
In Suicide, Durkheim had explained that anomie could lead to homicide, if the state of exasperation it causes was not turned against oneself, but against others. I believe Anomie´s behaviour towards Edie Ledwell and his subsequent murder of her fits this pattern.
By the end of the book, we have been given further reasons why the pseudonym Anomie is so fitting:
involuntary celibate man. As mentioned in Part 1, Durkheim believed that celibate men are more vulnerable to anomie.
spends most of his time on the internet, a mode of communication which, not unlike industrialisation in the 19th century, has changed our lives to a great degree in the last decades.
Speaking of change, fellow Drek´s Game co-creator, Morehouse, uses a comet as an avatar on Twitter (Comet Morehouse?). Comets are associated in the human psyche with world-changing events. There's more: Morehouse´s real name, Vikas, literally means “growth, development”. Coincidence? I wonder.
stays shrouded in anonymity for years, which allows him to cyber-bully and catfish in impunity. Not being held accountable for one's actions translates to not being regulated by society, in my book.
has a position of power online, contrasting with his situation offline. Durkheim argued that the less limited you feel, the more intolerable any limitation seems. Anomie certainly seems to find “real life” intolerable:
“He didn’t want to go back to college, he just wanted to stay in his room and be Anomie…” - The Ink Black Heart, 107
lack of meaningful relationships
His family is dysfunctional, to say the least, and even the person who he supposed to be his friend (Morehouse / Vikas), he manipulates and ends up murdering.
lack of parental supervision
While he lives with his family, he might as well live next door. It took a call from his college for his parents to figure out that he had been lying all this time.
Through the character of Bram de Jong, we are shown how insufficient parental supervision can contribute to a lack of moral norms and promote deviant behaviour.
But anomie´s influence in The Ink Black Heart doesn't limit itself to one character. It hangs over the book like a dark cloud, casting a shadow over relationships, especially those of a sexual and/or romantic nature.
The Ink Black Heart: From Attachment to Resentment
(...) Robin glanced up at the stained-glass window again, trying to make out Edie or Josh. She had a suspicion they might be the two people picking fruit: both had long brown hair and the female figure was throwing apples down to the male. Then she noticed, with a little start of surprise, the ruby-coloured glass letters set across the top of the picture, like a biblical verse.
A state of anomie is impossible wherever organs in solidarity with one another are in sufficient contact, and in sufficiently lengthy contact.
- The Ink Black Heart, 39
On the glass-stained window at the North Grove Collective, which Robin first thought depicted a vision of paradise, Edie and Josh are framed as Eve and Adam. It is only after she notices them, that the Durkheim quote is brought to Robin´s - and the readers´- attention. Here's what I think it means:
According to the Bible, Adam and Eve are the first man and woman. Despite God forbidding it, Eve eats the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - often depicted as an apple in western art - and offers it to Adam, who eats it as well. Spoiler: God is not happy and casts them out of paradise.
In a way, Anomie´s attack in Highgate Cemetery is a dark rewrite of this biblical event. In this version, Anomie breaks a taboo (murders) to punish the Creators (Edie and Josh) for having what he wishes he had (a love life, control over The Ink Black Heart).
There's also another way to interpret the above excerpt:
The apple symbolises Edie and Josh´s love. We know that at the time when Robin sees this scene, Edie and Josh´s romance is long over. It is but one of the many break-ups mentioned over the course of the book. For in The Ink Black Heart, relationships often end or do not start at all.
The utopia that Mariam depicts thus contrasts with The Ink Black Heart, fraught with romantic disconnection.
Let us go back to Durkheim and to his conception of a celibate man prone to anomie:
As [the unmarried man] has the right to form attachment wherever inclination leads him, he aspires to everything and is satisfied with nothing. This morbid desire for the infinite (...) very often assumes a sexual form which was described by Musset. (...) How can the feelings not be exacerbated by such unending pursuit? For them to reach that state, one need not even have infinitely multiplied the experiences of love and lived the life of a Don Juan. The humdrum existence of the ordinary bachelor suffices. New hopes constantly awake, only to be deceived, leaving a trail of weariness and disillusionment behind them. How can desire, then, become fixed, being uncertain that it can retain what it attracts; for the anomy is twofold. Just as the person makes no definitive gift of himself, he has definitive title to nothing. The uncertainty of the future plus his own indeterminateness therefore condemns him to constant change. The result of it all is a state of disturbance, agitation and discontent (...).
- Suicide: a study in sociology, Émile Durkheim (English Translation by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson)
The freedom to choose one's romantic or sexual partner has not waned since Durkheim wrote those words. Au contraire. Nowadays, most women also get to chose their partners. In western societies, extra-marital relationships have become the norm.
It stands to reason that the anomie stemming from a lack of direction in one's love life would not affect only unmarried men anymore.
Indeed, in The Ink Black Heart, many different characters struggle with deceived romantic hopes: Strike, Robin, Midge, Anomie, Hugh Jacks, Katya Upcott, Kea Niven, Preston Pierce, Madeline, Charlotte... Most of them form - or attempt to form - attachments to distract themselves from their disillusionment.
In Strike´s case this backfires spectacularly - as he gets to experience first-hand the feelings of disturbance, agitation and discontent anomie can evoke in a person when Madeline attacks him in Denmark Street - a foretaste of his stabbing by Anomie at the end of the book.
The final twist of the knife is given by Robin when she announces her upcoming date with Murphy. Strike then finally realises what had been right in front of his eyes for so long. A bit clueless for a detective, no?
But Strike isn't alone in his misery, as many of the above cited characters manifest some form of discontent or resentment. Still, he better shape up, if he doesn't want to regret his life choices X years down the line. I guess we'll see how he deals with his “unwelcome” realisation in the next book.
Concluding Remarks
Phew! This turned out to be longer than I expected.
While writing this, I ended up thinking about Leda. While she is barely mentioned in The Ink Black Heart, we know from the previous books that she lived an unconventional life, never staying in a place or in a relationship for very long - until she remarried, that is - and supposedly killed herself. If Leda decided to take her own life, what do you think would be the reason?
Sources
Durkheim, Émile. 1897. Le suicide: étude de sociologie.
Durkheim, Émile. 1951. Suicide: a study in sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson.
robert-galbraith.com. 2022. The Ink Black Heart Interactive Q&A.
Rowling, J.K. 2022. Twitter, 15th October 2022, part of a Q&A organised by JKR´s Barmy Book Army.
Wikipedia. Comet Morehouse.
Wikipedia. Comet.
Wiktionary. विकास.
Wikipedia. Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
WisdomPortal.com. Apple Symbolism.
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